Thomas Kingdom Doom (2016) Review

The granddaddy of the FPS genre made its triumphent return with Doom in 2016, and created a trilogy with Doom: Eternal in 2020 and Doom: The Dark Ages in 2025. The first of this rebooted saga is still lauded as a return-to-form for the genre, with the major focus being back on the sole player. The focus of this game is in the single player story, and Doom goes back to the older days of FPS gaming with the mindset of "heres a gun, start shooting anything that moves". While it may seem like dumb fun at first, the gameplay is far from it; you have to constantly move around, land your shots, and focus on your surroundings all at the same time while in combat otherwise you will die. You're not able to stick with one weapon for the entire game either, as the powerful demons that you fight have a variety of abilities and atributes that counter the effectiveness of a specific gun. Your arsenal itself ranges from short-ranged shotguns, to long-ranged rifles, to slow but powerful projectile-based rocket launchers that can suit every demon's advantages and disadvantages. This exciting and in-depth gameplay along with the brutal visual and audio feedback you get from killing each demon makes Doom a deeply fun and satisfying power fantasy akin to classic FPS games. If there's one word that I would have to use to describe this game, it would be 'unapologetic'. Unapologetic in the way that it doesn't hold your hand for too long or give you any moral dilemmas as you viscerally kill the terrifying demons ramaging through the blood-stained corridors. And despite all of this praise that I give Doom, the game wouldn't be half as memorable without the fantastic soundtrack to sell this unapologetic tone even further. Just like the gameplay, there's no emotion or sorrow in the music, but unrelenting fury; there's deep electronic and ambient music in the quieter areas, but when in large-scale combat, metalcore guitars and drums emerge and somehow perfectly sync with the action and beats of the battle. In summary, Doom's single player is a simple yet amazingly fun and refreshing return-to-form for a genre confined to online gaming tropes for half a decade at that point. And what else to bring it back down to Earth than the series that popularised it in the first place.